Wedding Session Afterthoughts: Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8 Di III VXD.
First things first. Congratulations to the Clarks. It was an honor to be asked to capture images of their special day.
Four weddings in I feel I am getting the hang of this wedding photography thing. As I stated in an earlier post:
- This is four more weddings than I ever expected to do.
And I have a fifth booked for later this year.
Oftentimes, wedding photography talk centers around gear.
Makes sense.
Of all of the types of photography I have pursued, no other has such a wide and conflicting grouping of requirements.
Detail pics.
Candid.
Low Light.
Fast AF.
Portraits.
Flash.
And anything else that comes up that you could never predict.
What I used for the first wedding…
…was a common setup.
Good light.
- A body and a short to long tele lens.
- A body and a wide-ish to short tele lens.
Meh light/Cave light.
- A body and a fast normal prime.
- A body and a fast portrait prime.
Since then, newer zoom lens types…
…have allowed for a much more simplified approach.
- One camera and one zoom lens.
Did I bring more stuff?
Yes.
Did I use other stuff?
Yes.
But that was a personal choice, not a need. Tamron did an amazing thing here. Created a new category of lens. Evidently, other companies agreed. Rokinon/Samyang basically copied off of Tamron’s homework and Sony is trying to upstage them with their own take on one lens for most purposes.
For this wedding I ran into a first time challenge for me.
Diabolical lighting.
Every wedding so far has been straightforward.
Wedding ceremony: Outside.
Reception: Inside.
Easy. Lighting was the only challenge to deal with.
The only lighting challenge involved so far was an afternoon wedding in December where we lost the sun between the ceremony and the reception. So it is still the amount of light, not the color of the light.
But this time was different.
Both the wedding and reception took place in the same location. I say first… A wonderful venue. Wonderful folks that were a pleasure to work with… But it had all the lighting.
And mixed lighting is of the devil. Sun on entry to the venue through the garage doors. Heavily backlit inside. Not sure for sure but I think all fluorescent inside and a near constant mix of all throughout, depending on the subject’s position and mine, with two small windows behind the alter.
And precious memories do not care about your preferred position. Again. A great venue and would gladly work there again. Even better, now I know the lay of the land there.
This required some fiddling with the settings. Largely setting exposure to subject rather than scene, and understanding that white balance for the background will often be at odds with the subject. Thankfully courtesy of RAW file flexibility post editing was a thing. Necessary here, not a luxury.
On to the topic of this post. The lens mentioned above.
A lens so good it displaced two Tamron lenses I really liked.
Purchased as a replacement for the two lenses above, it has gone on to be—and I do say this lightly—a game changer. I usually eye-roll when that phrase is used, but I believe it applies. It has been my one-stop lens for everything.
Event.
Portrait.
Product.
Weddings (Of course.).
And weddings is where this lens really shines. While a prime can be used in more static environments the many varied demands of a wedding make a perfect use case for a lens as flexible as this one.
Said another way I could make an argument for a smaller prime in many cases the size and weight of the 35-150mm is a sacrifice I make gladly at a wedding. As mentioned above the alternative was carrying two bodies and two zoomn lenses before and one body and one lens is a joy.
I leave my review linked above and sample images to make the case for the lens. So I will now pivot to sample images from the day of this wedding. I will let the images do the talking.
<ahem> I love this lens.
It is the quintessential piece of gear that gets out of the way and lets you focus on the photograph. No worrying about having the right lens and camera. 35mm to 150mm, with an added bonus of an equivalent 225mm once I hit the button I preset to APS-C mode, and from near to far is yours for the capturing at a twist of the wrist.
This is the easy answer to the only one lens question.
I did not call out the camera because this lens would do just fine on any Sony body from the A7III…
…forward. They also make one for Nikon and maybe Canon will be able to join the party. Good times.
One image capturing solution to go. Next up will be the best portrait solution I have had the good fortune to use.
Happy capturing.
-ELW
Eric L. Woods 